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Re: [tlug] OT: interesting NY times article:High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers



Edward Middleton wrote:

Which "sensitive technology" are you referring to. My understanding of Japanese export controls was that they don't even require permanent residence to have access to controlled technology. I don't think the issue is so much ethnicity as much as where the non-Japanese person holds citizenship. If you hold citizenship in a country were export controls apply (e.g. a communist country) or one in which industrial espionage is not really prosecutable, I would image you would have problems.

You are thinking too much. Maybe 90% of what constitutes "sensitive technology" is ... or was 30 years ago when I was just starting out working for Japanese companies the first time around ... anything that allows me to make the dollar you could make if you could set up your factory to operate the same way mine does. Until not so many years ago -- about the late-1980s -- the only thing separating Japan from Korea and Taiwan was the fact that Japan didn't have to spend 30% of its national budget on self-defense. Technologically, the three countries were quite similar and had similar access to raw materials and markets. Japan just had more available cash. Even today, it doesn't take a whole lot of work or research to make most consumer products better or cheaper depending upon market. And for the most part, profitability depends upon process or access to cheaper materials and/or labor, not necessarily superior products, research, or technology.


True "industrial secrets" are few and far between in relation to the total manufacturing that goes on in any industry. That's why most countries have treaties that treat the theft of original processes differently than copying the layout of a competitor's assembly line or their product design. The theft of existing design and the manufacture of poor copies, or the theft of trademarks, product names, or designs is the far more common and more lucrative crime and it is the one that gets the most attention because it is the squeaky wheel.

This is not to say that there are not processes and technology that need to be more carefully controlled because they enable the enemies of Japan ... and its allies ... to operate more secretively or gives them much greater power. And it is also true that Japan has done an absolutely miserable job of controlling access to any of this. But that dissemination has taken place with purchase orders and export permits and not through the use of spies, cameras, and careful analysis of electronic traffic in back rooms and secret hideouts. The people who need to be prosecuted for those crimes are government employees, for the most part. And heaven forfend that we prosecute Japanese government bureaucrats for being the overpaid, overeducated screwups they often are.

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CL


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